2005 Cyclegaine

2005 Cycle and Foot Rogaine, Tumut, NSW - 29 May 2005

REPORT #1
After a woeful result in the Oz Champs last weekend I was keen to put in a decent showing in the cyclegaine. I teamed up with a mate from high school who had never done a rogaine but was an outdoorsy type.
After an early start managed to still have a bit of prep time before the start... although we had only vaguely decided on a course by the start and so adopted a `see how it goes’ strategy. We started solidly picking up some quick points clearing the `lower’ section before tackling the truly main range. Early on we had the same route as Baldy and Julie but those guys decided to try their hand bush bashing cleverly and ended up winning the event, whilst we thought we’d stick to trails where our bikes perform better!!. Getting up this range involved over 400m climb...not super steep, but just kept going... also saw our first and last major mistake. Way up there was a 70 pointer just off the track, we stupidly walked straight past it only to get to the top and realise our blue. Alas, our spirits had been broken and the prospect of riding all the way down and then up again was not appealing so we just said `that’s rogaining’ and pushed on. Talking after a lot of teams seemed to have troubles with this control... Adam Hunter and Steve Dowlan who also cleared the course coming in 2nd did exactly the same thing we did but rode back and got the control.
Flew along the top, awesome views, easy controls really close together. 5 minutes for some lunch, quick stretch, grab some water and down the obligatory red bull. Did a couple of `Ins and outs’ on the way back down. Had a bit of a play on some of the single track I assume was used for the 3hr corc race a few weeks ago before flying around Tumut to bag a few easy points on the way to the hash. Ended up missing 4 controls but got back with 75 minutes to spare (including the one we walked straight past...arghhh). Came in about 8th overall I think. In hindsight (aint it great!!) would only tweak our route slightly to spend a little more time on foot early then pick up those last 3 in the coming down off the range and then drop onto the snowy mts highway to head back into town. Being out on the course for less than 5hrs is pretty bad in a 6hr event, although I have made a habit of getting back very early in my last few rogaines. I think with the time we had left we might have been able to bag these... hard to say.
Great fun day out, riding up the `hills’ around Canberra just don’t seem so impressive now.
By Seb Dunne

REPORT #2
DavO had sweet talked me into doing the 6 hr rogaine at Tumut, saying we’d do it easy?! Yeh, right!! But in truth, he lived up to his word and at no stage exerted any undue pressure on me to absolutely flog it. We did fang bits of it, but after a major stuff up the pressure was off really, and we had a great ride and time. The hills there are rather massive, and VERY steep in places - we got to examine some on them in detail several times, as we retraced our steps to go back and get controls that we had inadvertently ignored on previous occasions!!
The first few controls were a mad rush, and we really we prob should have saved them for later as DavB/Jules did, as they were so close to Hash. Anyway we got the first few well and then headed south for the serious stuff. All was fine until we followed others down a snig as it was a good sized short cut. But as this was happening, I was getting wet all over by back area. Mu camelback had sprung a leak and water had soaked my pants and socks and shoes. To compensate, I was drinking the contents as quick as I could so as to not waste it. I was going to the toilet nearly every control as a result - certainly well hydrated!! I stayed wet the whole event, and was happy to dry off at the end.
The wheels fell off the trolley when I/we thought that we were very certain that we knew where we were - but we were wrong!! Damn. We headed off up a massive hill and were looking for a gully on the left for a 30 pointer - we found a suitable gully (way too early though) and later we knick named this Dave’s gully as he took such a shine to it. It had no controls but for some reason DavO revisited it several times - he was obviously thinking that a control would grow into there sometime during the day??? Anyway it was obviously devoid of that colourful object so we pressed on up this massive hill. I was prattling on about how it was all ok cos of that hill to the south and we’ll find a control soon. But no controls!! What was going on??? DavO was hanging back thinking thinking, I was pressing on possessed to ride up that bloody great mountain... well about 5 metres from the top DavO cracks it!! We were on the wrong road!! We had ridden straight past 2 controls worth 160 points. Bugger. It was too big a hill to go back and get them!! So we pressed on and collected heaps of easy points up on the main range. All the while we were hatching a recovery plan: we had to drop back down into the valley and clean that out, and then swing over and get the 90 pointer that we had ridden straight past on the road/hill before.
After that we ripped down a steep hill into the valley and collected lots of controls in there quickly - it was going great guns again here. We even found a great short cut to get back up the 1/3^rd the way up that big hill to get that lost 90 pointer!! Yes!! Then we hooned it back into the town and cleaned that out really well. Then back south to get the last few high pointers - it was hard to get back there through the steep gullies near the golf course. Saw Peta there too - we bumped into each other a few times actually, and Peta was pressing on nicely with the job having fun. On this steep single track I had my only small fall - into the upside of the slope onto a rock after hooking a rock with my pedal - but no damage, just a bit of a surprise.
We bagged the last 100 pointer and had a quick slog up an almost impossibly steep hill to get our last control. We wished that we had another 10 or 15 mins though as there was a nice run of high pointers up there along a ridge loop with a nice exit back to Hash, but we didn’t quite have enough time to go get them - if we did then we would have almost cleared the course, apart from that rotten 70 point control 2/3 rds the way up that first monster hill and a 30 pointer on the hill in the town. Argh what could have been!!
DaveB and Jules dominated to take it out with bags of time to spare!! Very impressive!!
All up it was a hard day for me to try and stay with DAvO - he was cruising pretty much the whole way, and thanks DavO for once again being such a patient nice fellow, withholding swear words when I did stupid things like saying I knew where we were on the map. We had a great time and had lots of fun out there.. getting into difficulties and then trying to extract ourselves with minimal damage done, as best we could. All good fun. The food was yummy when you could get it; they underestimated the stomach size of a horde of 6hr cycling rogainers!
Trevor Jacobs
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Davo’s explanation of the maniacal laughter:
Trev mentioned my maniacal laugh after we visited a control the 2nd time. It was very funny, because Trev had just released his genius plan to allow us to revisit all those controls that we missed when we went the wrong way up that huge hill. It all seemed to be coming back together for us, as we were now nailing the controls again, this masterstroke plan could partly offset the approx 1 hour we lost from the massive mistake, and I joked that we could still win this event. About 20s later I get to the control, and as I go to punch it I discover that I’ve already punched the hole reserved for that control. My first reaction was that I must have mis-punched some other control in the wrong box (ie in the box reserved for this control). I thought damn!!! and wondered if we’d be able to work out which one we’d mispunched, and then convince the organisers of our mistake and get them to forgive us. So I repunched this control in the vacant box just next to where this one was meant to be punched, and noticed that the staple mark was the same as that already present in the correct box.
We had a couple of preliminary looks down the slopes for the best way to drop down, but postponed it and then dropped down from a more northerly place, getting some controls on the way. In fact we were so much on a high again that once again we over-cooked it!! DAvO was letting loose a maniacal laugh after we discovered that we had got the same control twice!! (from opposite directions).
Then I started laughing quite alot, as I had a look around and realised that the saddle did indeed look a bit familiar, and perhaps there was a chance we’d already been there. I yelled to Trev to see if he thought we might have possibly been there before, and then he starts cursing and laughing too.